The U.S. Open lost its appeal, "The Mummy" more of a bad thing and Cheech and Chong reunite

- Pass the bong and pound a beer, good times are here again! Everyone’s favorite stoners, Cheech and Chong, are going forward with plans to reunite for their first comedy tour together in more than 25 years. Cheech Marin said in an interview that he and Tommy Chong were talking and realized that, “If we’re going to do anything, it has to be now.” The pair broke up as a comedy team over creative differences but now are reuniting in the hopes of earning a few more dollars while at least a few people still recognize them. They’re banking on dope humor still being as popular now as it was back in the ‘70s, which I would say is a safe bet. There were potheads back then, there are potheads now and their likes and dislikes haven’t changed all that much. The stoners of today may not know much about who Cheech and Chong are, but then again, they’re stoners so their entertainment standards aren't all that high…..

- I’ve never gotten the practice of buying crap that used to belong to famous people. Never have, never will. I don’t need Tiger Woods’ discarded apple core, a jacket that used to belong to a famous musician or a glove that a hall of fame baseball player once used. You won't find me at any auction, making a bid on the ginormous granny panties formerly belonging to England’s Queen Victoria that one anonymous Canadian bidder picked up at an auction in central England. The bloomers, with a massive 50-inch waist (push away from the dinner table, Queen), went for $9,000, or $9,001 more than they should cost. Owning someone else’s used drawers is just nasty. I don’t care if they’re from one of the current hottest women on the planet, someone like Scarlett Johannson, it’s just disgusting. Other people’s underwear should either be worn by them or thrown away and left in the trash if the garments are worn out. There is a mild bizarro factor here because Queen Victoria was only 5 feet tall and still rocked that 50-inch waistband, but even that’s not enough to override the gross-out factor. I don’t care that she passed away in 1901 and her clothes have had a long time to just sit and detox, they’re still someone else’s underwear. Stop bidding on these kids of items, idiots. Are you seriously telling me you’re going to display those in your home, maybe point them out to people who visit? Yeah, those will be a real conversation piece, you tool…..

- Boy, that escalated quickly. I mean, it really got out of hand. It escalated. It did, didn’t it? In a move I just didn’t see coming, the ManRam era in Boston is officially over. Manny Ramirez was traded Thursday shortly before Major League Baseball’s non-waiver trading deadline. Sure, Manny and the Red Sox were at each other’s throats, but that was nothing new. Manny was openly inviting a trade and doing everything possible to antagonize the organization, but it was nothing we hadn’t seen every year he’d been in Boston. Yet ManRam has been shipped off to the Los Angeles Dodgers in a three-team trade that will bring All-Star outfielder Jason Bay to Boston from Pittsburgh to replace Manny. Apparently the tipping point for the trade was a meeting that Boston general manager Theo Epstein had with some of the team’s veterans after Wednesday night’s game in which the players expressed their feelings that Manny could not be counted on to give his best effort anymore and had to go. Again, I’m floored by this trade. Because we’d been down this road so many times and seen so many idle threats from both sides, I just became calloused to the whole saga. I figured this was one more time around the same track, one last back-and-forth before Manny left the team at year’s end via free agency. Now, he’s plying his trade in sunny SoCal and the Red Sox will try to win another World Series without Manny being Manny in left field. Something tells me they’re going to fall short….

- Universal Studios went to the well one too many times. Even if you’re working with a great, storied movie franchise, there comes a point when the next sequel is one too many. Unfortunately for Universal and director Rob Cohen, the “Mummy” movies are neither great nor storied and so coming back for a third installment turns out to be a huge mistake. “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” features actors of questionable ability, like Brendan Fraser and Jet Li, plus some clumsily done CGI effects, mediocre writing and a predictable plot that offers few twists and not nearly enough to justify paying $10 to see this film. A change in venue from Egypt, setting for the first two movies in the series, to China does little to inject life into the plot. Fraser is back as Rick O’Connell, brash explorer who has retired to an English estate with his wife. The time frame is a couple of years post-WWII, but O’Connell can't stay retired when his now-adult son Alex uncovers a historical tomb in China and faces off against an immortal warlord from the time of the Great Wall (Jet Li). For much of the movie, you feel like you’re watching a cheap knockoff of an “Indiana Jones” movie, only with stiffer, more rigid dialogue and even less convincing acting. Even in the world of action movies, where plot and believability are often sacrificed in the name of raw energy, “Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” is a dud of significant proportions. Avoid it if at all possible….

- At least this time I won't bother wasting any time or energy on a tennis tournament that ends up being a total waste of time. For Wimbledon this year, I got myself all psyched up to watch my girl Maria Sharapova compete as one of the top seeds and hopefully win the tournament so I could see her play as many matches as possible. Unfortunately, she was bounced in the early rounds of the event and all of that invested time and effort went for naught. So as I look ahead and see that Sharapova will be competing in neither the Beijing Olympics nor U.S. Open, I’m going to try and find a silver lining. Yes, there will be zero chances to see her and her amazing, never-ending legs in action, but at least I know that going in. I won't put any effort into following the women’s side of the U.S. Open or Olympic events because I have no desire to see those two she-men, the Williams sisters, running around with their bulging biceps and grunting nonstop. With Sharapova, her three Grand Slam titles and No. 3 world ranking sidelined following an MRI that revealed two small tears in tendons in her right shoulder, I can focus on other parts of the sporting landscape. “After yesterday's match, I knew there was something seriously wrong with my shoulder,” Sharapova said in a posting on her Web site. She has been bothered off-and-on by her right shoulder for some time and pulled out of a tournament in March because of it. “This is something that needs a lot of time to heal," she wrote on the site Thursday. Take your time, Maria, we all want you healthy and on the court as soon as possible. In the meantime, don’t be a stranger….